A U.S. federal judge on Monday ruled that Microsoft's LinkedIn unit cannot prevent a startup from accessing public profile data, in a test of how much control a social media site can wield over information its users have deemed to be public.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public profiles.

And a little bit on the back story, in case you had not been following this case over the last few months:

The dispute between the two tech companies has been going on since May, when LinkedIn issued a letter to hiQ Labs instructing the startup to stop scraping data from its service.

HiQ Labs responded by filing a suit against LinkedIn in June, alleging that the Microsoft-owned social network was in violation of antitrust laws. HiQ Labs uses the LinkedIn data to build algorithms capable of predicting employee behaviors, such as when they might quit.

Got all that?

Seems pretty simple, but at the same time the ulitmate outcome of this case (LinkedIn will almost certainly appeal this ruling) could be pretty important not just for LinkedIn and hiQ Labs, but also for you and me and everyone else who's data/profiles are at the core of this case.

Three quick takes from me since it's my blog...

1. While we are all pretty aware and comfortable with the social network concept of 'You are not the user, you are the product', most of us have continued to rationalize this away as it pertains to our usage and participation on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. If we get enough utility and value from being a member of LinkedIn, (networking, job opportunities, sales leads, etc.), then we are ok with LinkedIn building their business around selling access to and ways to interact with our profile data. But even if we are ok with LinkedIn earning revenue in this way, are we as comfortable with a third party like hiQ doing much the same? When you and I signed up for LinkedIn, I don't recall any T&C that asked if that would be ok? I personally get value from LinkedIn. I doubt the same can be said for hiQ.

2. hiQ's business seems to be about aggregating and analyzing public LinkedIn profile data and then building out a set of tools that can help organizations make predictions about potential turnover. They are making a pretty big assumption that the 'right' amount of people have up-to-date, accurate, and meaningful profiles. And I think that is a pretty big assumption. I had to look up about 5 people on LinkedIn today, and two of them I am 100% don't have their current job title listed correctly. And these are the kinds of folks that use LinkedIn pretty regularly.

3. And despite the above caveat about the completeness and accuracy of user profiles, it is indeed true that LinkedIn (courtesy of all of us), do possess an incredible amount of workforce data. Companies, jobs, career progression, contacts, etc. All good and important stuff. But you know who else possesses an even more accurate and more detailed data set about workforces, compensation, job moves, career paths, mobility andmore? Your current HR Tech provider(s), that is who. The bigger cloud HR providers, (ADP, Oracle, Ultimate, SAP, Workday, Infor, and more), all have incredibly detailed data sets on people. Where thry work, how much they earn, where they went to school, how their careers have evolved, etc. And these providers are all taking positive and aggressive steps to create valuable tools and insights from these large data sets. Plus, I would gather that while the data in your HRMS might not be 100% perfect, it is likely closer to the truth than the stuff on the average LinkedIn profile. If you haven't yet, talk to your HR tech provider about what they are doing to create new tools to help you that are based on the knowledge that can be gleaned from millions of data points in the cloud.

I will keep an eye on the LinkedIn - hiQ case to see how it develops, but if nothing else it has served as a semi-occasional reminder that once it is on the internet, data flows like water. And you probably can't hold it back forever.

Happy Wednesday.

]]>Webinar: Choose the Future: Five Important HR Tech Conference Themeshttp://steveboese.squarespace.com/journal/2017/8/14/webinar-choose-the-future-five-important-hr-tech-conference.htmlSteve2017-08-14T13:23:35Z2017-08-14T13:23:35ZQuick announcement of a FREE webinar I will be doing this Wednesday, August 16 at 2PM ET to discuss some current and important HR Technology Trends, and to do a bit of preview of the upcoming HR Technology Conference.

You can read the abstract of the webinar below, and you can sign up for the webinar HERE

As we developed the program for the 20th Annual HR Technology Conference scheduled for October 10 -13, 2017 in Las Vegas several important HR Tech trends rose to the surface. The HR Tech Conference has always been about the future - of the workplace, human resources, and the ways people interact with technology, colleagues and their organizations overall. For many organizations, if not most, these varied futures will be greatly influenced by technology. It could be essential for core HR and workforce management tools, new tech that allows leaders to better understand the engagement and sentiment of the employees, or highly analytical technologies that can actually “predict” the future itself, as well as many others. These are the technologies and the stories that we will bring to the forefront at HR Tech this October and the ones that will help HR leaders navigate what can seem at times to be challenging futures ahead.

In this webinar, HR Tech Program Chair Steve Boese (me) will share the five most important HR tech trends that will be prominently featured at the Conference in October, provide examples of how these trends are manifesting in HR technology solutions today, and preview the upcoming Conference to enable you to make the most of your HR Tech experience.

Sign up for the webinar HERE and be sure to tweet your thoughts and comments using hashtag #HRTechConf.

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve was live at the OC Tanner Influence Greatness Conference with guest David Sturt who talked about how companies can intentionally shape and improve company culture. David shared insights from OC Tanner research on company culture, the key facets or elements that tend to describe, drive, and influence culture, and how organizations and leaders can leverage these insights into practical and actionable changes to improve their own cultures.

We also talked a little about how cultures are formed, Steve shoehorned in his favorite Rock-Paper-Scissors analogy, and David shared news of the annoucement of a new partnership between OC Tanner and HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse, which was really exciting for us at the HR Happy Hour Show.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE or by using the widget player below:

Finally, remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, and wherever you get your podcasts.

]]>The fine line between unpopular and unemployablehttp://steveboese.squarespace.com/journal/2017/8/8/the-fine-line-between-unpopular-and-unemployable.htmlSteve2017-08-08T13:54:42Z2017-08-08T13:54:42ZApologies for the not fully formed thoughts to follow as I am putting this down in the Delta Sky Club in MSP, (a pretty nice airport to make the East Coast - West Coast stopover in I think).

Like you probably have as well, I spent a little time the last few days following the news about the Google employee's (now former employee's) saga from the leak and subsequent publishing of his paper? article? manifesto? regarding diversity and inclusion at Google, the subsequent internet and internal to Google reactions, the Google leadership reactions, and which has culminated, (for the time being), in said Google employees firing from the company. I am not linking to pieces about these developments, there are now 19025 pieces out there on this, and I am pretty sure you know the story as it sits.

You might also be familiar with the ongoing saga of another famous unemployed person, aspiring NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who despite seemingly possessing all the requisite experience and physical ability to be a valuable player on several NFL teams, (including my beloved New York Jets who plan on using at quarterback a couple of guys only slightly more qualified than me), remains an unsigned free agent with only about one month to go before the NFL regular season is set to begin.

Kaepernick, as I am pretty sure you know, made headlines last season by demonstrating, (apologies if this is not the best word), his advocacy for a number of social issues by 'taking a knee' during the playing of the national anthem prior to his NFL games last season. This form of demonstration later was joined by numerous other players in the league, expanded to some other sports, and generally created tons of news and awareness beyond the sports world. Chances are, unless you are at the stadium, you never cared about the pre-game national anthem, (in fact for 'normal' games the anthem is rarely televised), until Kaepernick began taking a knee.

What connects these two unemployed but talented people, the former Google engineer and Kaepernick, together today seems to me to be two things. One, they are both currently out of work. And two, the primary, (arguable) reason that they are both out of work has little to do with their ability, skills, experience to do the job that they would like to do, but has more to do with things that they think and beliefs they hold that for wildly different reasons, are seen as pretty unpopular with various constituencies that are important to their professions.

I am not going to dig in to the merits or validity or appropriateness of either person's statements and actions. As I said there are thousands of places you can get that if you care to. But what I am interested in is what these cases say or suggest about the kinds of things can can get you fired, (or keep you from getting hired). We've known for a decade or so now, since the advent of the social media age, that posting or saying terrible, racist, discriminatory, even pornographic things online can and does get people fired.

But both of these cases, again, this is certainly debatable, don't seem to fall into that kind of territory. At least to me, they might both be controversial, might go against the majority of thinking in their respective fields, but don't seem to, on their surface, rise to the level of 'Fire this person immediately' or 'Hire other, less qualified people instead of this person' territory. Debatable for sure, I admit. Clearly the CEO of Google and about 30 NFL owners have a different take.

Two more quick thoughts then I have to catch a plane.

One, the kinds of people that tend to agree with/support the Google engineer and the ones who support Kaepernick are probably, (many of them anyway), on complete opposite ideological poles on lots and lots of issues. Said differently, the kinds of views that get you run out of one employer and would be embraced at another are almost entirely situational and pretty subjective.

And two, the line between unpopular and unemployable is thin, keeps moving all the time, and is set (usually) by folks who never, ever, ever, want to deal with this kind of stuff. Once something, anything, consumes energy and resources that are supposed to used generating revenue/income, that line moves to 'unemployable' really quickly.

I am still thinking about this, I hope you are too. Maybe we can do a HR Happy Hour Show on this and get some feedback from listeners and readers.

]]>A quick reminder that your employer probably won't help you stay employablehttp://steveboese.squarespace.com/journal/2017/8/7/a-quick-reminder-that-your-employer-probably-wont-help-you-s.htmlSteve2017-08-07T13:00:04Z2017-08-07T13:00:04ZThe belief that employees have to own their own development, career planning, and future employability, and that no employer can truly invest/care that much about its employees in the modern world to do those things is not a new one. I am pretty sure I heard it from an employer myself back in the 90s.

But while the idea of employees being (more or less) solely responsible for ongoing development and learning, and as in the case with most jobs now, keeping up with and remaining/becoming proficient in the latest and most relevant new technologies is generally accepted these days, it isn't often that we see senior execs of big companies going on record stating this as a fact or condition of employment. No, usually C-suiters like to talk about 'people being our most important asset' and like to tout investments in employee learning and development and other ways they portend to be a 'people' organization.

That disconnect between what leaders of large companies like to say, and the generally accepted premise that all employees, even 'permanent' employees, are just temps that get a few more benefits, was really crystallized for us all by the (kind of surprisingly), frank comments on employee development attributed to Dell and VMWare CIO Bask Iyer, in a recent interview and as reported in the Economic Times of India.

Check these comments then a quick comment of my own...

Bask Iyer, CIO and Executive Vice-President of Dell and VMware, has sounded a warning for information technology (IT) employees: surf the oncoming technology waves all the time and upskill yourself, otherwise be prepared to leave IT.

"I am making sure that all my IT folks are best equipped to generate revenues rather than lay them off. People without the skill-sets to go ahead to the next level in a company will go anyway, that’s just the way it is," Iyer said in an interview to

Iyer said the onus for upskilling lies with the employees themselves and not the organisations. "As for reskilling, no organisation provides for that because even they don’t know what to train employees on," he said. The IT employees themselves must figure out the future and upgrade their skills accordingly, Iyer said.

Pretty frank, and seemingly honest observations from a tech leader at one of the world's most well-known tech companies. Iyer tries to couch or position his comments less as 'the organization won't make sure your skills are up to date because it is solely your responsibility as an employee to do that' and more of a 'we as an organization just can't predict what skills will be needed, and therefore are unable to train our staff to remain relevant and current.'

But that is kind of a cop-out as well as probably not being 100% honest if you dig in a little.

If the CIO of Dell claims that he and the rest of Dell's leadership can't predict what skills will be needed, then truly what is the reasonable expectation that the average software engineer or designer at Dell would be able to make that call him or herself?

And wouldn't it be reasonable for that software engineer at Dell to think that the technical and business leadership at Dell (or insert any company name here), would in fact be able to have that kind of foresight and strategy, and be able to help develop workforce plans and associated technical skills and competencies needed with at least some advance warning?

My guess is this - Dell probably has some idea of where they want to go in the next few years, but since no one can really be sure what technologies will dominate and be needed outside of a year or so, they want to hedge and offload at least some of their responsibility to their employees.

I will wrap with this last comment. If we, all of us, are all truly temporary workers, (we are), then we need to break down lots more assumptions - legal, regulatory, social, ethical, of what it means to be an employee anywhere. I am kind of glad to see the frank comments from Iyer about employee development. He finally said what lots of us have been thinking for a long time.

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish review Mary Meeker from Kleiner Perkins influential Internet Trends Report for 2017 and discuss what some of these big trends in technology mean for HR and HR Technology. Ms. Meeker's report is an annual 'must-read' for any organizational leader and always offers some enlightening insights into the important global technology trends.

In the show, Steve and Trish break down a few of the big trends, (mobile technology adoption and usage, 'voice' interfaces and devices like Amazon Echo, and the continued rise of all types of gaming), and offer some ideas and recommendations for HR and HR tech leaders on how to translate these trends into actions and strategies.

Additionally, we talked about the recent Amazon Jobs Day, and what their plans to hire 50,000 new employees in one day say about work, workplaces, and changing employee expectations of work.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

Remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

]]>Defining the competitionhttp://steveboese.squarespace.com/journal/2017/8/2/defining-the-competition.htmlSteve2017-08-02T13:01:03Z2017-08-02T13:01:03ZThere are two schools of thought on how an organization should think about its competition - for customers, market share, talent, brand awareness, etc.

One approach is to study your competitors closely, monitor their strategies, actions and decisions, and devote a lot of resources and energy to roles like competitive intelligence gathering, market analysis, and the development of specific playbooks focused on your main competitors to prepare your salespeople for what they are likely to encounter in the field. I'd say that in enterprise tech, HR tech for sure, this is the approach that most medium-to-large providers take.

The alternate approach is to largely ignore specific competitors and spend the vast majority of your time working on product, message, and lots of internal and specific capabilities like implementation, service, support and the like. This is often the approach startup tech companies take as they likely have to spend most of their time trying to define their own message, communicate their unique value proposition, and if they are truly innovating in the market their competition may not even actually exist. Or said differently, they often are competing against 'doing nothing' and not against a competing product or service.

And truly most companies probably exist somewhere in between these two extremes - thinking about the competition some, and other times taking a more internal focus. And this focus usually skews towards former as the company grows, enters new markets, or begins to attract new competitors (success breeds competition).

Almost 700 U.S. companies have reported quarterly results so far this earnings season, and the e-commerce titan’s name has popped up on roughly one of every 10 earnings conference calls so far. And the retailers whose lunch has long been eaten by Amazon.com Inc haven’t even reported yet.

In all, Amazon has been raised either in passing or with some urgency on 75 calls hosted by corporate chieftains in the past several weeks, according to a Reuters analysis of call transcripts from components of the S&P 1500. That’s well more than twice as many mentions as Google or its parent Alphabet Inc and over three times as many as Apple Inc.

Everyone from traditional retailers to 'big tech' companies like Microsoft and IBM all the way to Dow Jones stalwarts like 3M and Johnson & Johnson all have at least one eye on what Amazon is doing.

It is kind of incredible to think that Amazon is now a real (or imagined) competitive threat across such a wide range of industries and companies.

But here's what at least I thought was the really interesting thing about the piece, and the reason for the post in the first place.

Most organizations spend lots and lots of time, (maybe too much time), thinking about the competition. I get the feeling that truly amazing, game changing companies like Amazon don't spend all that much time doing that. No, they focus on doing the things that make others worry about them instead.

And that is a much, much better place to be.

Postscript - I am totally obsessed with the Amazon Echo and really annoyed at every other piece of technology I own that will not yet respond to voice commands. I think this is going to be a really big deal in workplace tech and sooner than we think.

]]>CHART OF THE DAY: The World's Most Valuable Brandshttp://steveboese.squarespace.com/journal/2017/7/31/chart-of-the-day-the-worlds-most-valuable-brands.htmlSteve2017-07-31T13:30:48Z2017-07-31T13:30:48ZHappy last-day-of the-month Monday!

Quick shot for kicking off a busy summer week. Courtesy of our pals at Visual Capitalist, let's take a look at the list of the corporations owning the world's most valuable brands:

The 'brand value' methodology is referenced on the infographic above, but the essential element is that it it is the intangible asset that exists in the minds of consumers, which is usually an image forged over time through exposure to branding, ads, publicity, and other types of personal experiences. Attaching a dollar value to this intangible asset is perhaps more art than science, but while the specific dollar values can be debated, it probably can't be debated that there is at least some value to the brand.

So while the top companies for brand value are likely the ones that you'd expect, after I saw this chart I couldn't help noticing that these companies also seem to be the ones that show up on the various 'Best or Top of Most Awesome Companies to Work For' lists that float around on the internet.

I cut the Top 40 List off at 7 due to space concerns and also because that is all I needed to make my point

Hey, what a surprise! The Top 5 Global Brands in terms of value, (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook), all show up inside the Top 7 of the LinkedIn 'attractiveness' list.

And you'd find similar kinds of results on most of the other types of 'Best Places' lists - they are dominated by these mega-tech brands that make the coolest products, have the most incredible corporate campuses, and often are led by influential and charismatic leaders.

All of this to make the point you already know - the thing we like to call 'employer brand' is inextricably tied up in what most people will call the consumer or public brand. The most powerful, valuable, and well-known consumer brands have such an advantage in the employer brand category that it is almost laughable.

If you are one of the companies on the 'most valuable' list, congrats, things are always going to be easier for you to attract and recruit. If you are not one of those global, mega-brands, you have to know you are starting any competition for talent at a disadvantage.

Apologies for the slow pace of posts on the blog of late. Between time off, some business travel, some personal stuff, and the fact that, well, it's the dead of summer and just about everything seems to slow down around this time, I have not been as focused on the blog of late.

But I did want to just shoot out a quick update about a few things that are either interesting or important to me these days (making the huge assumption some or all might be important to folks who read this blog).

So here goes...

1. The HR Tech Conference early registration savings of $500 is only good until July 31 (Monday). Combine that with my discount code STEVE200 and get an additional $200 off your registration. But act fast because after Monday, rates start creeping up.

2. I am really excited about all the great HR Happy Hour Network podcasts that have been released in the last few months. Head over to the HR Happy Hour home page to check out the latest HR Happy Hour shows, We're Only Human with Ben Eubanks, and HR MarketWatch with George LaRocque. And big thanks to HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse.

3. I finally got on board with the Amazon Echo and have had fun figuring out what I can do with it and the Alexa ecosystem. It is a pretty cool piece of technology, even if most of the folks that have them are not doing much more than setting timers and playing music. But in only a week I find myself frustrated with the other bits of technology that I have to interact with can't all respond to voice commands. Once you get started with the voice as the input paradigm, you don't want to go back to typing, or swiping, or pressing buttons. I am looking forward to seeing which HR tech vendor starts to really advance voice interaction with their tech this year.

5. And one more plug/link, I was a guest on the Strong Suit podcast a couple of weeks ago talking about the HR Tech that growing companies need, and what kinds of HR tech they may not need. It was fun to be a guest instead of the host, thanks Jeff Hyman for inviting me.

6. Some random links of things I probably would have written about this week, (and my still write about)

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak to talk about the connections between HR, talent management, careers, the workplace and sports, through the lens of the NBA Summer League 2017.

Matt and Steve are charter members of 'The 8 Man Rotation' and co-authors of a series of E-books that take a deep dive into the lessons that HR and business leaders can take from pro, college, and truly all levels of sports.

On this show, Matt and Steve examine hiring biases, the importance of leadership setting an example and tone for the organization, (especially important for new leaders), and how sports and the Summer League in particular are a great metaphor and example for the 'always on' and 'always auditioning' tendencies of the growing gig economy.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

This was a really fun show, we hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to HR Happy Hour show sponsor Virgin Pulse - learn more about them at www.virginpulse.com.